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Saturday, November 2, 2013

The Most Powerful Women in the Middle Ages: Queens, Saints, and Viking Slayers, From Empress Theodora to Elizabeth of Tudor by Michael & Melissa Rank

Discrepancies in history.

A major discrepancy in history – and one which my book
discusses – is the role of women in the Middle Ages.

The image that springs to mind is a damsel in distress who
sits in a high tower wearing a traffic-cone for a hat and who waits for a
knight to rescue her from her captors. Once freed by this knight, she is shoved
into a forced marriage, breeds sons for her husband, and keeps her mouth shut
in public. If not, she is burned at the stake as a witch for expressing
independent thought, because that is what people did to women in the Dark Ages.

Such ideas about the Middle Ages are dominant, and they
would be very convincing if not for the fact that they are almost completely
fictional. It is true that women typically had fewer legal and social rights as
men in medieval times. But the idea that the period from 500 to 1500 AD was a
time of stagnation is based more on the ideology of historians in recent times
than any truth about the past.

“The Dark Ages” was invented during the Enlightenment Period
as a way for scholars to look upon the past as a period of less-developed
civilization. Protestant scholars in particular depicted this period in this
way due to the corruption of the Catholic Church. The more romantic depictions
of medieval women, knights, chivalry, and jousting tournaments come from the
period of Romanticism, which originated in modern Western Europe. Medieval
costumes and symbols became all the rage in the 19th century. German emperors
dressed up in such clothing at public balls. In Victorian England, the ruling
class held reenactments of tournaments. And the idea of a passive
lady-in-waiting that existed throughout the Middle Ages solidified in the
public consciousness. This mythical woman had all the virtues of a Victorian
lady who espoused sexual restraint, was kept in idle luxury, and held a strict
social code of conduct.

As a result, the concept of a medieval woman has largely
been filtered through Victorian ideals. This was a time in which British
females lacked suffrage rights or the ability to own property. It is from this
time that the image of a woman wearing a traffic-cone hat emerged.

There is a second misconception of medieval women that has
come from modern-day academic historians. In a well-meaning attempt to give
medieval women a stronger voice, they have essentially turned the most notable
figures of this era into 21st-century feminists. Joan of Arc is credited with
challenging the gender norms of her era by wearing men's armor into combat and
cutting her hair short. Catherine of Siena is imagined to have challenged the
patriarchal world of the Catholic Church by sending letters of rebuke to the
pope. Anna Komnene, the world's first female narrative historian, is thought to
have crafted her history for the sole purposes of giving a stronger voice to
women.

But we do not see such sentiments in any accounts of these
women's lives. No woman under consideration in this book challenged the idea of
a patriarchal world. Catherine of Siena may have rebuked popes, but she never
called on them to install female priests or bishops. Joan of Arc may have
dressed as a man in combat, but she preferred to wear a dress while in prison
and forbade other women from joining her in battle. She believed that her
circumstances were unique since she had been called by God.

So we see that attempts to foist our own idea of who
medieval women actually were fail to capture them in all their complex glory.

Michael & Melissa Rank

About
The Authors

Melissa
Rank writes
extensively on intercultural communication and health on her blog
http://hungaryforturkey.wordpress.com.
An avid traveler, she has taught English as a Second Language in many
countries, including Indonesia, Turkey, Hungary and Rwanda.

She
is currently enjoying taking care of her young daughter and
navigating the terrain of motherhood, and unlike many of the women in
this book, has no plans of taking over the country or the world any
time soon.

Michael
Rank is
a doctoral candidate in Middle East history. He has studied Turkish,
Arabic,

Persian, Armenian, and French but can still pull out a
backwater Midwestern accent if need be. He also worked as a
journalist in Istanbul for nearly a decade and reported on religion
and human rights.

He
does his best to help out Melissa raise their daughter, whom he
secretly hopes can one day be in a book like this. But he would like
her to seize power without having to go through all those marriages
to surly men, of course. Michael is also the author of the #1 Amazon
best-seller “From Muhammed to Burj Khalifa: A Crash Course in 2,000
Years of Middle East History,” and “History's Worst Dictators: A
Short Guide to the Most Brutal Leaders, From Emperor Nero to Ivan the
Terrible.”

The
idea of a powerful woman in the Middle Ages seems like an oxymoron.
Females in this time are imagined to be damsels in distress, trapped
in a high tower, and waiting for knights to rescue them, all while
wearing traffic-cones for a hat. After rescue, their lives improved
little. Their career choices were to be a docile queen, housewife, or
be burned at the stake for witchcraft.But
what if this image of medieval women is a complete fiction?It
turns out that it is. Powerful female rulers fill the Middle Ages.
Anglo-Saxon queen Aethelflaed personally led armies into direct
combat with Vikings in the 900s and saved England from foreign
invasion. Byzantine Empress Theodora kept the empire from falling
apart during the Nika Revolts and stopped her husband Justinian from
fleeing Constantinople. Catherine of Siena almost single-handedly
restored the papacy to Rome in the 1300s and navigated the brutal and
male-dominated world of Italian politics. Joan of Arc completely
reversed the fortunes of France in the Hundred Years War and
commanded assaults on English fortresses despite being an illiterate
17-year-old peasant.This
book will look at the lives of the ten most powerful women in the
Middle Ages. Whether it is the famed scholar Anna Komnene, who wrote
the first narrative history, or Ottoman Queen Mother Kösem Sultan,
who ruled the Islamic empire through three of her sons – all these
women held extraordinary levels of power at a time when women were
thought to not have any.It
will explore how they managed to ascend the throne, what made their
accomplishments so notable, and the impact they had on their
respective societies after their deaths. It will also describe the
historical background of these women, their cultures, and what about
it helped or hindered their rise.Their
stories still echo down to today. They are a testimony to the
resiliency of individuals to accomplish extraordinary things, even if
society puts on them enormous constraints.

The
story of Lady Aethelflaed is literally one of epic proportions. She
led England's two southern kingdoms against the Danish Vikings,
crushing their armies due to her bravery and tactical brilliance, and
creating a united England. When J.R.R. Tolkien was a professor of
Anglo Saxon studies at Oxford University, he likely used her life as
an inspiration for Eowyn, Lady of Rohan, in “The Lord of the
Rings.”

If
so, Tolkien could not have paid a higher compliment to a historical
figure. It was Eowyn who slew the Lord of the Nazgul, among the
fiercest enemies in his series. Other similarities between the two
women are numerous. Both faced down terrifying enemies at a time of
doom. Both led battle charges on horseback into pitched battles. And
both left behind a better society than the one they ruled.

Born
in 870, Aethelflaed was the eldest child of King Alfred the Great of
Wessex and Queen Ealhswith. Her father was a widely respected
commander who won a battle in Edington against the Vikings in 862,
freeing western Mercia from their control. As she grew up, Alfred
kept his daughter at his side and gave her military instruction that
was usually only reserved for men. He taught Aethelflaed the use of
weapons, military strategy, and the forming of legal and economic
policies. She watched him assemble a navy, collect taxes, promote
trade, and protect the church.

Her
father put Aethelflaed into an arranged marriage to consolidate his
domains, but matrimony did not temper her martial spirit. During a
journey from Wessex to Mercia, Aethelflaed and her wedding party were
attacked by Vikings. The assault was likely done to prevent an
alliance between Wessex and Mercia. Whatever the reason, the Vikings
suffered the fierce wrath of interfering with a bride while preparing
for her wedding. Her military upbringing did not leave her unprepared
during the surprise attack.

She
fought alongside her bodyguards, protecting the maids and dowry. When
the battle turned against them, Aethelflaed and her men retreated
into a castle, which by then most of her attendants had been killed
and her dowry looted. Despite being outnumbered, they eventually
struck down every last one of their assailants. Only she, her
maidservant, and a bodyguard survived. This episode perhaps ranks her
as the most lethal Bridezilla in history.